Little Princess
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: ... because that's what Lianokami is, and has been, since she was only a few years old.


**A/N:** The promised Lianokami fic. This challenge now has an LJ comm, under the name of 20yearsinalife. Rules etc. to be found there. Entrants who want to write something other than TP welcomed with open arms. Or at the very least chocolate.

**Disclaimer:** Only the twentyyears challenge and Akio belong to me.

**0**

Lianokami was born amid anxiety and happiness and pain and underlying sorrow. Anxiety, because both mother and baby had been in serious danger. Happiness, because here was a treasured princess, a daughter for Roald and Shinko, a first grandchild for Jon and Thayet, a niece to all rest of the Conté brothers and sisters and cousin to a large proportion of the Yamani court. Pain, because Lianokami was difficult, and both mother and child came close to the Black God's Realm, only to be determinedly hauled back by a healer. Sorrow, because, very like her distant cousin Kasumi, it was believed that Lianokami was going to be an only child for the rest of her life, apart from three unexpected months when a baby brother lived and died.

**5**

Lianokami was five when her brother was born. His name was Akio: he was entirely unplanned. He was also a week late, a larger baby than the frailer Lia had been. She had looked forward to having a true sibling, not just scary, dismissive, older Sarralyn, Rikash, who was more interested in trying to copy his sister in her transformations, grieving Kasumi whose parents were dead, and Frank, who was never really interested in any of her games. Then, Akio had come a week late, four days after her birthday, and Lia felt ignored in the sea of preparations and parents who were elsewhere and absorbed in other things, so that her birthday passed almost unnoticed, except by Liam and Vania, who were very generous but not her parents. Even so, Lia almost forgave Akio when she saw him, and was happy for three more months. Then, baby Akio's lungs collapsed, and Lia was an only child again.

**10**

By the time Lianokami, now known to most as Lia, was ten, she had acquired an excellent strategy for getting through life with the minimum of setbacks, which involved smiling, being polite, and listening patiently- all of which was time-consuming, but gave her the reputation of someone obliging and well-mannered it wouldn't hurt to be nice to every now and then. And so, for the past five or so years, she had been as polite as she could, and everything had gone fairly well. Her parents certainly loved her, but they were often busy in their own ways and as a result Lia was rather independent and perfectly capable of disappearing off into a corner of the menagerie with a picnic basket and without informing anyone at all. She had few close friends: Sarralyn, a tall, awkward, distressingly powerful almost-teenager now, was unconcerned by Lia's actions. Rikash, less powerful and closer to Lia, spent a lot of time with his nose in a book, and most of the time she could drag him outside, often by the heels, but not when he used his Gift to stop her; her small, unpredictable reserve, barely enough to light fires and heal small gashes and bruises, was nothing against his. Of the other children of her parents' friends, Frank and Kasumi were pages, so she saw them fairly regularly, but they were always busy. Most people in the Palace liked Lia- although she refused to associate with a number of the nobles' sons and daughters, and enforced this personal rule by being jaw-breakingly courteous, but rarely warm –and it helped that she was not inclined to mischief (at least not of the messy sort.) The servants called her the Little Princess- part simple description, part honorific.

**15**

Fifteen was a year of turmoil and upheaval in Corus. It was the year when King Jonathan decided that the Agnatian Law against womens' succession to titles, in light of the fact that Lia was definitely Roald's only child and Roald was the Crown Prince, would have to go. This didn't bother Lia, although there were ruffled nobles and law experts sweeping up and down the Palace corridors for several months, cluttering her home up; she carried on as normal, civil, kind, and thoughtful to those she knew. Had she been questioned on the subject of the Agnatian Law, it is doubtful that she would have answered; despite not having much of a temper and being typically rather cool-blooded, she did have a somewhat rigid sense of what she considered an insult and what she didn't. She had grown up nearly as tall as her father, but without looking very much like him; her skin was certainly paler than her mother's, but not as pale as his, her eyes were not blue and his hair wasn't a true black like hers- that said, there as something in her cast of countenance that occasionally reminded people of her father, and they shared similar values. By the end of the year, Roald and Jonathan between them had had the law repealed: Lia would eventually become Queen Lianokami I.

**20**

When Lia was twenty, State matters again began to concern her. It had started some two years earlier, when people had noticed that the second-in-line to the throne was no longer a sweet, quiet little girl but a clever, reasonably attractive, still fairly quiet teenager. It was at this point that a word that hadn't been heard in the Palace with relation to a Conté for quite some time began to be whispered in the rooms, speculated on, considered: the word, of course, was marriage. It naturally hadn't taken very long for Lia to hear of this, and it caused her to feel almost worried. She didn't like the idea of leaving Tortall, leaving her place where she had connections and friends and family. But she might not have any choice, and that unsettled her. But fortunately for Lia's peace of mind, being second-in-line to the throne to inherit meant that princes and the like came to court her, as opposed to Lia and/or an embassy being obliged to travel here and there every so often. This was indeed incredibly boring, but also unavoidable. Like it or not, it was Lia's duty to marry... eventually. Perhaps not now, definitely some time soon. There was very little she could do but smile, circulate politely around the gatherings, talk and think about ways to get rid of the most obstreporous people. Eventually, she escaped to one of the gardens and courtyards dotted around the Tortallan Palace, sitting among the bushes, flowers, trees and, occasionally, if she happened to be in the right garden at the right time, small birds, songbirds, sparrows and the like, attracted by the Wildmage's presence- because she got so much more thinking done without people to bother her, and anyway, she valued the peace of it. Surprisingly few people understood that.


End file.
